Michael Cohen

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Michael Dean Cohen (born August 25, 1966) is an American federal prosecutor and the personal counsel to Trump, and has been often referred to as Trump's "fixer" in media.

He served as co-president of Trump Entertainment and was a board member of the Eric Trump Foundation, a children's health charity.

Cohen served as deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee from 2017 to 2018, a year after the Special Counsel probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 US elections began.

On August 21, 2018, he pled guilty to eight charges, including campaign finance fraud, tax evasion, and bank fraud.

Cohen said he broke campaign finance legislation in the direction of Trump and "for the sole purpose of influencing" the 2016 presidential election.

Cohen pled guilty to lying to a Senate committee about plans to build a Trump Tower in Moscow in December 2018.

On May 6, 2019, he admitted to the federal jail near Otisville, New York.

Early life and education

Cohen was born in Lawrence, New York, on Long Island, New York. His mother, a Holocaust survivor, was a surgeon, and his father, a Holocaust survivor, was a surgeon. Cohen is Ashkenazi Jewish. He attended Woodmere Academy and earned his BA from American University in 1988 and his JD from Thomas M. Cooley Law School in 1991.

Personal life

In 1994, Cohen married Ukrainian-born Laura Shusterman. Fima Shusterman, Laura Shusterman's father, left Soviet Ukraine for New York in 1975. Samantha and Jake have a daughter, Samantha, and a son, Jake. According to a Trump biographer, Cohen's father-in-law was the person who introduced him to Trump.

Since childhood, Cohen has been friends with Felix Sater. Sater is a convicted felon and real estate developer with ties to Russia's mafia. Both men were involved in the Trump Tower Moscow contract.

Cohen served as chairman of the Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School from late 2016.

Cohen had bought several houses in Trump's buildings before joining the Trump Organization. Cohen is known for his "priceless penchant for luxury," according to a 2017 New York Times article; he married at The Pierre, drove a Porsche while attending college, and once owned a Bentley.

According to police officer Paul Dean's felony, Cohen, Donald Trump, Jr., and others had obtained handgun carry licenses after making pledges to the Police Athletic League or the New York City Police Foundation despite not having the correct credentials on file. Lanny Davis, a Cohen prosecutor, did not comment on Cohen's charges.

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Career

Cohen began practicing personal injury law in New York in 1992, while working with Melvyn Estrin in Manhattan. Cohen was an advocate in private practice and CEO of MLA Cruises, Inc., and the Atlantic Casino in 2003.

In 2006, Cohen became a partner at Phillips, Nizer, Benjamin, Krim & Ballon. He worked at the law firm for about a year before joining The Trump Organization. Cohen was immediately barrered from attending his New York arrest after his 2018 criminal charges.

When Cohen submitted a biography to the New York City Campaign Finance Board for inclusion in the New York City Council's voter's guide in 2003, he was a candidate for New York City Council. Taxi Funding Corp. and a fleet of over 200 taxicabs in New York City were listed in the book as co-owners. Cohen, at the time, was a business partner in the taxi industry with "taxi king" Simon Garber. Cohen was expected to own at least 34 taxi medallions through 17 limited liability firms as of 2017 (LLCs). Another "taxi king" and convicted felon Gene Freidman was still on the medals until June 2017, but this arrangement came to an end after the city's Taxi and Limousine Commission decided not to renew Freidman's licenses. Due to the MTA, seven tax warrants were issued against Cohen and his wife between April and June 2017.

Cohen has been active in real estate projects in Manhattan, including the purchase and selling of four apartment buildings between 2011 and 2014. The four buildings' total purchase cost was $11 million, but total sales price was $32 million. Cohen sold the four properties at a much cheaper price in all-cash transactions, to LLCs owned by persons whose identities are not revealed. Cohen said that all four properties were purchased by an American-owned "New York real estate family fund" that paid cash for the homes in order to obtain a tax deferred (Section 1031) exchange, although Cohen did not identify the purchaser specifically.

Cohen bought an Upper East Side apartment building for $58 million in 2015.

Cohen was a volunteer for Michael Dukakis' 1988 presidential campaign. He served as an intern for congressman Joe Moakley and voted for Barack Obama in 2008, but later said he was dissatisfied with Obama.

He unsuccessfully ran for the Fourth Council District of New York in 2003 (a Manhattan district). Cohen lost by 4,205 votes to Democratic candidate Eva S. Moskowitz, who gained 13,745 votes. Cohen briefly ran for a seat in the New York State Senate in 2010. He didn't officially register as a Republican until March 9, 2017. Cohen reregistered as a Democrat on October 11, 2018, in an attempt to distance "himself" from the current administration's values.

In the fall of 2006, Cohen joined the Trump Organization. Having read Trump's Art of the Deal twice, Trump hired him in part because he was already an admirer of Trump. He had purchased several Trump properties and persuaded his own parents and in-laws, as well as a corporate partner, to buy condos in Trump World Tower. Cohen aided Trump in his fight with the condo board at the Trump World Tower, which led to Trump's taking over the board. Cohen, a close confidant of Trump, runs an office near Trump Tower.

Cohen was named COO of mixed martial arts promotion firm Affliction Entertainment, in which Trump held a significant financial interest.

Though Cohen was an executive at the company, he was known as Trump's "pit bull." Cohen co-founded the website "Should Trump Run" in late 2011, as Trump was largely speculating about his 2012 Republican Party presidential nomination. Trump has been drafted to enter the race.

"If someone does something Mr. Trump doesn't like," Cohen said in an interview with ABC News in 2011, "I do everything possible to end it to Mr. Trump's benefit." If you do something wrong, I'm going to come at you by the neck, and I'm not going to let you go until I'm finished."

Cohen sent an email to The Onion, asking that an essay that mocked Donald Trump ("When You're Feeling Low, Just Remember That I'll Be Dead In About 15 or 20 Years") be dismissed with an apology, claiming it was defamatory.

"I'm warning you, treading lightly because what I'm going to do to you is going to be fucking disgusting," Cohen said in response to an inquiry into rape allegations (brought up in the 1980s but later recovered) by Ivana Trump about her then-husband Donald Trump.

According to The Washington Post, Cohen sent an e-mail to Dmitry Peskov in January 2016, the "most tangible outreach documented by a top Trump aide to a senior representative of Putin's cabinet."

In which Cohen said, "Says who?" a video of an interview with Cohen by CNN's Brianna Keilar went viral, in which Cohen said, "Who?" Multiple times in reaction to Keilar's assertion that Trump was behind in all of the polls. Cohen has defended Trump against antisemitism allegations.

He and Darrell C. Scott formed the National Diversity Coalition for Trump in 2016. Peter J. Gleason, a lawyer who filed for protection of documents relating to two women with sexual harassment charges against Eric T. Schneiderman, told him that if Trump had been elected governor of New York in 2013, he would have helped bring the allegations to public notice.

According to the Steele dossier, Cohen met with Russian officials in Prague, Czech Republic, in 2016 with the intention of punishing those who had hacked the DNC and "cover up all trace of the hacking campaign." The dossier contains raw intelligence and is thought to be a mash-up of accurate and inaccurate information. Cohen denied the charges against him, claiming that he was in Los Angeles between August 23 and 29, and that he was in New York for the entire month of September. There is no evidence of him travelling by plane, according to a Czech intelligence source, but Respekt magazine and Politico pointed out that he might have theoretically travelled or train from a neighboring country within the Schengen Zone, such as Italy. In the second case, there is a record of Cohen entering the Schengen zone from a non-Schengen country, which should have existed if it had existed. However, the DC Bureau of McClatchy Newspapers announced on April 13, 2018 that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had evidence that Cohen visited Prague in the late summer of 2016, with two sources reporting this unknown journey. Cohen came from Germany, according to the documents, and since both countries are in the Schengen passport zone, Cohen would not have required a passport stamp to enter Czech territory. Cohen denied going to Prague the next day. Cohen also confirmed that he did not travel to the European Union in August 2016. McClatchy revealed in December 2018 that a cellphone traced to Cohen had "pinged" cellphone towers around Prague in late summer 2016. During that time, McClatchy revealed that an eastern European intelligence service had intercepted communications between Russians, one of whom wrote that Cohen was in Prague. However, the Mueller Report states, "Cohen had never flown to Prague and was not concerned about the allegations, which he believes were untrue": 139

Cohen and Ukrainian opposition politician Andy Artemenko and Felix Sater visited the Loews Regency in Manhattan in late January 2017 to discuss a proposal to lift sanctions against Russia. According to the current strategy, Russian forces will be pulled out of eastern Ukraine, and Ukraine will hold a referendum on whether Crimea can be "leased" to Russia for 50 or 100 years. Cohen was sent a written proposal in a sealed envelope that he gave to then-National Security Advisor Michael Flynn in early February.

Cohen, Elliott Broidy, and Louis DeJoy were among the Republican National Committee's three national deputy finance chairmen on April 3, 2017. Cohen also formed an alliance with Squire Patton Boggs for legal and lobbying representation on behalf of Trump in April 2017.

Two congressional panels requested Cohen to disclose any contacts he had with people connected to the Russian government in May 2017, amid growing probes into suspected Russian meddling in the 2016 US election. In 2018, Mueller was implicated in the Mueller probe. Michael Cohen and Donald Trump signed a joint defense deal that allowed their lawyers to share details during the Mueller probes, and joint defense deals were reached between Donald Trump and Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort. Cohen retained Davidoff Hutcher & Citron, who later represented Rudy Giuliani.

Cohen received a mysterious payment from intermediaries for Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in May 2018, but Cohen was not authorized as a foreign agent. Cohen and the Ukrainian president's office denied the charges. The BBC had to explain that the allegation was untrue, apologizing to Poroshenko, deleting the article from its website, paying court fees, and paying tribute to Poroshenko.

Rudy Giuliani revealed in May that Cohen was no longer Trump's counsel. According to The New York Times, Cohen's secretly filmed recordings of his conversations with Karen McDougal about hush payments were revealed in July, seemingly contradicting earlier claims by Trump and raising concerns about campaign-finance ethics. Cohen also stated that then-candidate Trump knew about the meeting between his son Donald Jr. and other Trump campaign officials with Russians who claimed to have information damaging to the Hillary Clinton campaign, defying the President's repeated assertion that he was unaware of it until long after it was held.

Cohen resigned as deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee in June 2018. His resignation letter referred to the continuing probes and also criticized the Trump administration's practice of distinguishing undocumented families at the border.

Jerry Falwell Jr., the president of Liberty University, reached out to Cohen in 2015 and asked for a personal favor. Falwell had told Cohen that a third party had obtained compromising photographs of Falwell's wife. Cohen visited with the third party, but the individual destroyed the photographs after the meeting.

Stormy Daniels (legal name Stephanie Clifford), a young film actress from the fall of 2016, was speaking to some journalists and claimed that she had had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006. Keith M. Davidson, Cohen and Daniels' solicitor, negotiated a non-disclosure agreement in October, under which she would be paid $130,000 per month. Cohen formed Essential Consultants, a Delaware company, and paid the $130,000. The Wall Street Journal first announced the deal in January 2018.

Cohen told The New York Times in February 2018 that he paid Daniels out of his own pocket; he also said that the amount was not a campaign contribution and that he was not reimbursed by either the Trump Organization or the Trump campaign. Cohen was not denying the possibility that Trump reimbursed Cohen for the payment as an individual, according to the Washington Post later. After initially being unaware of the $130,000 payment, Trump declared for the first time that Cohen had represented him in the Stormy Daniels lawsuit.

Cohen said he skipped two deadlines to pay Daniels because Cohen "couldn't reach Mr. Trump in the tumultuous final days of the presidential campaign," Cohen said, and that after Trump's election, Cohen said he had not been reimbursed for the payment. This article was referred to as "fake news," according to Cohen.

Cohen had used her Trump Organization email to consult with Daniels about her nondisclosure agreement, and Cohen had used the same Trump Organization email to arrange for a transfer for funds that would ultimately lead to Daniels' payment, according to NBC News on March 9. Cohen said in reaction that he had transferred funds from his home equity line of credit to the LLC and Daniels' attorney.

Daniels said in a 60 Minutes interview with 60 Minutes on March 25, 2018 that she and Trump had sex once before, and that later she had been threatened in front of her infant daughter and felt threatened to sign a non-disclosure deal.

Daniels was lying in the 60 Minutes interview, according to ABC's Good Morning America on March 26, a Cohen prosecutor. Daniels' remarks, according to Cohen's lawyer, were "libel per se and intentional infliction of emotional distress."

Cohen filed a private arbitration lawsuit against Daniels in February 2018, based on a non-disclosure contract signed by Daniels in October 2016 in exchange for $130,000. Cohen obtained an order from an arbitrator prohibiting Daniels from publicly discussing her suspected relationship with Trump. Daniels filed a federal lawsuit against Trump and Cohen arguing that the non-disclosure agreement is unenforceable because Trump never signed it, according to Cohen, who also attempted to compel arbitration, which would avoid public hearings. Cohen signed a statement in the court stating that he would invoke his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself in the Daniels lawsuit.

Among other items, lawyers for Cohen filed an objection to Daniel's lawyer Michael Avenatti's appointment as her advocate in a lawsuit involving Cohen, alleging that the objection (the objection) was based on ethical principles and local court rules. During a Fox & Friends interview, Cohen said that the money to Daniels came from him personally, not from the campaign.

Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model, denied that she and Trump had an affair from 2006 to 2007, a charge that Trump has since denied. McDougal was charged $150,000 for her research but no one published it, according to the National Enquirer, who believed in catch and kill. Cohen founded Resolution Consultants LLC, a Delaware shell firm, on September 30, 2016, but the story's rights were never purchased.

Cohen had been caught on tapes and phone calls with other individuals. "Michael Cohen used his phone to record talks rather than taking notes," Lanny Davis, his son. More than a hundred audio recordings from Cohen's raid in April 2018 have been released by the Trump team, although only one of them features a substantive interview with Trump. The tape was discovered on July 20, and its actual recording was released on July 25.

Cohen unintentionally recorded a conversation between Trump and him on July 20, according to the post. The discussion involved a potential hush payment to the National Enquirer's publisher. The recording had been referred to as a privilege attorney-client collaboration by the Special Master analyzing the Cohen documents, but Trump's lawyers denied that assertion, meaning that lawyers would have it and use it. The tape was shot in September 2016, two months before the election and weeks after the Enquirer paid McDougal the $150,000. Trump and Cohen discuss whether they should purchase the rights to her story from Enquirer, and Trump seems to embrace the suggestion. Rudy Giuliani, Trump's counsel, had initial claims that the tape shows him saying, "Make sure it's done correctly and make sure it's done by check." Giuliani also stated that no payment was made and that Trump's staff renounced privilege and allowed the recording to be released because it shows no violation of law. The recording seems to contradict Hope Hicks, then Trump's spokeswoman, who said that the Enquirer payment had "no knowledge of any of this."

Cohen's counsel Lanny Davis sent the actual recording to CNN on July 25, which was broadcast on the Cuomo Prime Time network. On it, Trump can be heard concluding a phone call with an unidentified individual and then discussing several aspects of company with Cohen. Cohen claims he must "open a firm for the exchange of all of the details regarding our friend David," referring to American Media, which publishes the National Enquirer. Later on, when they discuss financing, Trump says something about "pay with cash," to which Cohen responds "no, no, no," but the tape is unclear and the word "check" can be heard; instead, the word "check" can be heard. Trump's attorneys' transcript says, "Don't pay with cash." "Information has been checked" At that point, the tape cuts off abruptly. Any reference to "cash" will not have meant "green currency," according to a Trump administration prosecutor, but a one-time payment ("cash") would not have equated to extended payments ("financing") in either case, followed by paperwork. "The tape gives the first sign that Trump discussed buying the right to women's stories—apparently to muzzle them—right before the 2016 election," Aaron Blake of The Washington Post writes. Cohen also claims that he speaks in "somewhat coded words," which Trump admits, implying that he is already familiar with the situation.

"Later on I knew" was the hush-money payments until "later on." Later today, the narrator will comment on the status of the car. What he did—and they weren't taken out of the campaign funds — is the important thing. "In fact, my first question when I heard about it was asked was, did they come out of the campaign because that might be a little confusing." And they didn't come out of the race, which is a big deal. But they weren't... it's not even a campaign infringement." Any payments intended to sway an election vote must be disclosed, according to US election law.

Shera Bechard, a former Playboy Playmate, had an affair with married Republican fundraiser Elliott Broidy, according to The Wall Street Journal in April 2018. She became pregnant by him, had an abortion, and was set to be paid $1.6 million in hush money. Broidy, a Republican fundraiser, was a deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee, as well as Cohen and DeJoy.

Cohen said in a 2018 court hearing, he had only gave legal advice to three people in 2017: Donald Trump, Sean Hannity, and Elliott Broidy. Cohen arranged the $1.6 million payment from Broidy to Bechard in late 2017 as part of a nondisclosure deal that obliged Bechard to remain anonymous about the matter. Bechard was represented by Cohen, and Keith M. Davidson was the behemoth's attorney. Davidson had been the prosecutor for Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. The Bechard nondisclosure deal used the same pseudonyms: David Dennison for the man and Peggy Peterson for the woman, as in the Daniels agreement. The payments were supposed to be made in installments.

Bechard filed a lawsuit against Broidy, Davidson, and Daniels' counsel Michael Avenatti, alleging that the three parties had violated the deal in connection with the termination of the settlement payments.

Essential Consultants LLC is a Delaware shell firm established by Cohen in October 2016 to make it possible for Stormy Daniels to receive hush money. Cohen used the LLC for a variety of business ventures that were little known to the public, with at least $4.4 million moving through the LLC between Trump's election to the presidency and January 2018. Stormy Daniels' counsel Michael Avenatti unveiled a seven-page paper detailing what he thought were financial dealings involving Essential Consultants and Cohen in May 2018. Avenatti did not disclose the source of his information, which was later extensively confirmed by The New York Times and other publications. According to the report, hundreds of thousands of dollars were given to Cohen by Essential Consultants, from Fortune 500 companies like Novartis and AT&T, which did not have employees before the Trump administration. Essential Consultants' receipt of at least $500,000 from a New York-based investment company called Columbus Nova, which is linked to a Russian oligarch, was also revealed. Viktor Vekselberg, a Ukrainian-born Russian oligarch, is the company's biggest client. Vekselberg, a business partner of Soviet-born billionaire and major Republican Party contributor Leonard Blavatnik, is a business partner of the Soviet-born billionaire and a major Republican Party contributor, and a frequent Republican Party donor. The fee was not related to Vekselberg, according to a Columbus Nova spokeswoman.

Many of the payments, including four totaling $200,000 that AT&T paid to the LLC between October 2017 and January 2018, were inquired about, although the proposed merger between the business and Time Warner was pending before the Justice Department. The money was paid to the LLC and other companies that were used to provide insight into the new administration, according to AT&T, and the LLC did not do any legal or lobbying for AT&T.

In early 2017, AT&T's CEO announced that it had been contacted by Cohen to ask "his opinion about the new president and his administration" on May 11, 2018. Cohen earned $600,000 ($50,000 per month) over the year, which its CEO described as "a huge mistake." Cohen approached Novartis and was promised similar facilities.

Novartis, a Switzerland-based pharmaceutical company, owed the company over $1.2 million in separate payments. Novartis announced a statement on May 9, 2018 that it had retained the LLC to assist the company with the company's "health care policy" of the new administration, but the firm did not receive compensation for its investment. Novartis made the decision not to engage Essential Consultants further, but it did not terminate the agreement out of "cause," prompting questions over why the organization did not pursue reimbursement.

Korea Aerospace Industries paid $150,000 for advice on "cost accounting procedures," ostensibly.

Franklin L. Haney decided to pay Cohen $10 million if he successfully lobbied for the State Department of Energy to fund the Bellefonte Nuclear Generating Station, or a reduced price if the funding goals were only partially fulfilled.

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